Ismita's Clients

Karen Myna Cantor is a Young Adult fiction writer based on the East Coast. Now a mapmaker, she spent several years working as an environmental scientist in a Florida town notorious for Florida Man stories.
Her current manuscript is a contemporary YA novel about two queer teenagers in rural South Florida who decide to put their town on the map in the worst way possible—by staging a (fake) disaster.

Born in Detroit to Arab immigrants, Hayan Charara is a poet, children’s book author, essayist, and editor. His latest poetry collection, These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit, was recently published by Milkweed Editions. His children’s book, The Three Lucys (Lee and Low 2019), received the New Voices Award Honor, and he edited Inclined to Speak, an anthology of contemporary Arab American poetry. With Fady Joudah, he is also a series editor of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. Hayan lives in Texas, where he teaches at The Honors College at the University of Houston.

His newest work, Hush, Little Children, is a novel about a couple trying to get pregnant just as a child suicide epidemic breaks out and a fringe group led by a charismatic leader uses disinformation and fear to advance ideologies rooted in hatred.

Dhaval Desai was raised in Atlanta, Georgia, and completed his undergraduate studies at Emory University. He completed medical school at the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine in St. Maarten, performed his clinical years of medical school in New York City, and had the opportunity to rotate through various community hospitals. He is board certified in both internal medicine and pediatrics and is currently Director of Hospital Medicine at Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital. He is also a pediatric hospitalist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. 

Over the past several years, he has developed a passion for the patient and human experience in medicine through sharing perspectives, knowledge, and stories. His current project is a personal narrative of the COVID-19 pandemic and his experience of it as a doctor, leader, and father. 

Photo Credit: Sara Hanna Photography

Originally from Philadelphia, Chris has also lived in Berkeley, Paris, Sydney, Berlin, Antwerp, Chicago, and now Atlanta, where he teaches Health Humanities at Emory University. He is the author of Dysfluencies: On Speech Disorders in Modern Literature (Bloomsbury 2014). His fiction has appeared in AGNI, Louisiana Literature, and Sortes.  He received his Ph.D. in English Lit from U.C. Berkeley and is a former Fulbright scholar.

        His debut novel is a dark comedy titled DWELL HERE AND PROSPER, based on a diary his father kept while recovering from a stroke in a dysfunctional assisted living facility somewhere in Delco, PA. It was published by Tortoise Books in 2023 with the audiobook being simultaneously published by Blackstone Audio.

Chris Fleming is an Associate Professor in the School of Humanities at Western Sydney University, where he is also a member of the Writing and Society Research Center. He is the author or editor of ten books and has written widely on literature, philosophy, and culture. His fiction and nonfiction work has appeared in both scholarly and popular media, including The Guardian, The Sydney Review of Books, Kill Your Darlings, The LA Review of Books, Parallax, The Saturday Paper, and The Chronicle Review. 

His most recent project, On Drugs (Giramondo 2019), is an equally humorous and contemplative memoir that discusses addiction, obsession, the intellect, and masculinity. 

Jessica Greaves is a YA fiction writer from the South Coast of Australia. After spending five years working as a materials engineer, she transitioned into manufacturing operations, where she is passionate about promoting girls in STEM and fostering an inclusive industry future. She spends her free time reading, learning languages, and obsessing about medieval and early modern history.
 
Her current manuscript is a YA historical fantasy set in the magical underworld of 1920s Venice. It is inspired by her love of history and travel.

Originally from The Bay Area, Jessica lives in Davis, California with her husband and 3 young daughters. Jessica has a background teaching Special Education but left the field to pursue
a career in writing. She’s written articles for ScaryMommy, Filter Free Parents, Mom.com, Sonoma Family Life Magazine and others. She graduated from UC Davis with a BA in creative writing and psychology.

Her debut novel is a work of upmarket bookclub fiction titled BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA, in which an alcoholic mother's obsession with her mother-in-law’s perfectionism forces her to acknowledge the villain in the mirror. With over a decade of sobriety, Jessica is a fierce advocate for addiction recovery. 

Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Justin Haynes is a novelist and short story writer. He has been awarded various fiction residencies and fellowships including the Tin House summer workshop and the Nicholas Jenkins Barnett fiction fellowship from Emory University. His writing has been publishing in a variety of literary magazines and journals, including Caribbean Quarterly, the Hawai’i Review, and Pree. Justin currently lives and works in Atlanta. His debut novel, IBIS, will be published in Fall 2024 by Abrams/Overlook Press. 

Matt Hogan was born and raised in Philadelphia and completed his undergraduate degree at Penn State University. He completed medical school at Temple University and then slogged through internal medicine residency at Emory University before finding the time to pursue his other interests including eating, sleeping, and writing. He is a board-certified internist and is currently the Director of Hospital Medicine at Emory Decatur Hospital and Emory Long Term Acute Care Hospital. At an early age, Matt fell in love with both science and comedy, and he employed those passions to pursue his career and influence his writing. Matt currently lives in Decatur, Georgia with his wife and two children.

His current project is a collection of personal essays that reflect on the absurdities of life and medicine through a humorous and self-deprecating lens.

Brodie Lowe is an award-winning short story writer and novelist based in South Carolina. He has received the Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fellowship in Fiction and the Author Fellowship by The Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. He is a two-time finalist of the Ron Rash Award in Fiction. His stories have appeared in the Broad River Review, Mystery Tribune, New Plains Review, Eastern Iowa Review, The Mark Literary Review, and elsewhere. 

His current manuscript is a collection of stories written in the Southern Gothic tradition.